Five reasons I’m happy renting

I am a happy renter. I like to send an email or a text message with “something broke, please fix it” to someone and then not worry about it anymore.

I’m also not exactly in a place to buy a house. I have debts to pay off, then there’s the problem of coming up with $40,000 for a down payment.

Coming up with that kind of money seems so improbable. At least in the next couple years, anyway.

I just read this article, that states “entrepreneurs should not buy houses” and I think I agree. For now, anyway.

One of my favorite tools is the New York Times Rent vs Buy interactive graphic. Click here for the fun. My rent is $825 per month, and I wouldn’t buy unless I could buy something around $225,000. According to the graphic, I should not buy. Even playing around with it and increasing my rent to $1200/month and then the buying price of $400,000, I should never buy. Or at least not in the next 30 years.

My five reasons for renting:

Renting is not throwing money away. In fact, continuing to rent could help decrease my monthly spending.

Renting helps keep me living a simple, frugal life. I mean, I wouldn’t buy a one-bedroom anything, but I’m happy to rent one. In fact, I like living in small spaces. It’s cozy.

Renting makes me flexible. Soon, I’ll be debt free, so without anything tying me to any particular place, I can be as flexible as I want. Move to ________ for a while? Why not?

Renting means I can live in as many neighborhoods as I want. Even if I never leave Portland, I’d have the opportunity to see what it’s like to live in any neighborhood.

Maybe I am an entrepreneur. I certainly know that I could use money to get the caramels up and running, and definitely not spend the amount of a down payment!

I know that there are things that may change my mind. I’m single, and dating someone who lives in another town. If I could get him to move here (and by “get him” I mean “find him a job here”) then I would love to buy a house with him. Or rent one.

If I have children, maybe I’ll want to buy a house. But it might just be better to rent when there are kids spilling things all over the place!

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I'd definitely buy again if I had to do it all over again. Also, you know that you don't HAVE to put down 20%, right? And it can sometimes make more sense not to put down 20%- we did the math with our loan agent, and because we got such a good interest rate on our house, it actually made sense to put down less and put the rest into savings, because paying a few extra thousand dollars up front did not make a significant dent in our monthly mortgage payment. There are even loans out there where you can put down as little as 3% (FHA loan).

And I agree that owning a home ties you to one location (especially in this real estate market), but owning a house means that when it's time to move, you're selling it and *hopefully* making money on your purchase (again, not really happening in this market, but in theory…), which is something that can't be said for renting, because you don't get that rent back. Also you gain equity on your home the longer you live there and you can borrow against that for things like home improvements, which is nice. Not to mention the tax deductions are pretty sweet as well! But there is definitely something to be said for renting and having someone else fix things for you- as long as you have a good landlord!

I've owned in the past and due to a cross-country move, now rent. Sure, it's tempting to look at buying again, especially with the low prices and low interest rates, but as you said in point #1, when you rent and something goes wrong, it's mostly someone else's problem. Certainly it's a problem with will come out of their pocket and not mine. I'm not ruling out buying again, but I will be far more selective and it will be much more of a business decision than an emotion-driven decision.

I am currently renting and happy to do it. As you know, I'm in deep debt. I want to get out of debt, have a down payment and know how big of a place I want before I go buying it. When I do buy I also want to have money to renovate it besides the down payment that I want. I prefer renting because I can fix up the place a littlle within reason but still have options–and if something goes wrong, I let my landlord know.

I definitely agree that renting is for me (right now!). I love the fact that if something breaks I can just call maintenance- things like "home repairs" are just not in the budget right now. I'm also dealing with my debt, and want to at least have less before I think about buying a home. Though I would definitely like to in the future!

I'm a happy renter right now. Even though I long for a house, I don't long for the 80% increase in costs that come with it. I have a really good deal with renting my studio right now, and I'm going to stretch it out as long as possible, even though it means sacrificing and delaying a few things that I desperately want (like a bedroom door).